


By Touch

by ravenbringslight



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Asgardian Loki, Blind Character, Falling In Love, Jotun Thor, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Marathon Sex, Secret Identity, Size Difference, Surprise feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:34:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26807428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenbringslight/pseuds/ravenbringslight
Summary: Prince Loki of Asgard has been promised to Prince Thor of Jotunheim, a fearsome beast of a man who Loki has yet to meet, and, furthermore, wishes he never had to meet at all.The night before the wedding, Loki sneaks away to a tavern to drown his sorrows. He wasn't counting on meeting a handsome Jotun stranger, or falling into his bed, or, inexplicably, just how hard it would be to leave it in the morning.
Relationships: Loki/Thor (Marvel)
Comments: 52
Kudos: 796
Collections: Best Thorkis, Thorki Baby Bang 2020





	By Touch

**Author's Note:**

> Entirely inspired by [this tweet](https://twitter.com/macleanbrendan/status/1274114871336960000?s=20):  
> "One time at a folk festival I was flirting with an extremely large, mostly blind, banjo player and after two drinks he just hiked me over his shoulder and carried me back to his tent like a prize deer for love making. It was the greatest night of my life."
> 
> Many thanks to my wonderful artist darklittlestory for bringing these gorgeous babies to life! ❤️
> 
> Also thanks to co-mods R and E without whom this event wouldn't exist. ❤️

The tavern that Loki found himself in was the loudest, dirtiest place he’d ever set foot, and full to the rafters with gamblers, ruffians, and blackguards. A more inappropriate place for Asgard’s young prince would be hard to find. It was perfect.

“Ale,” Loki said to the barkeep. He had to clamber up onto the stool, but it couldn’t be helped. Nothing in Jotunheim was made for someone his size and he was going to have to get used to that whether he liked it or not.

“You have silver?” the barkeep said. He eyed Loki dubiously. Loki wasn’t wearing his own face, but he was still quite clearly Asgardian.

“Indeed I do.”

Loki pulled a coin from his pouch and set it down on the counter with a click. The barkeep palmed it and grunted, satisfied, then filled a mugful of frothy ale from a cask the size of a carriage and set it down in front of Loki. It was bigger than his head.

“That wasn’t very nice,” a voice from Loki’s right said.

“What wasn’t?” Loki said distractedly. He was still trying to figure out the logistics of how to get the ale from the mug into his mouth. He couldn’t climb up onto the counter, that would be embarrassing. Perhaps he could take it off the counter entirely and hold it between his legs?

“That wasn’t silver.”

Loki finally looked over. Sitting on the stool next to him was a Jotun in a fur mantle with wild blond hair spilling down over his shoulders to mingle with his beard. One of his eyes was milky, a scar running from forehead to cheek right down the middle of it, and the other, a brilliant red, looked vaguely unfocused. He had the most strikingly handsome face that Loki had ever seen.

“Yes it was,” Loki said.

The Jotun pointed to his ear. “I’m blind, not deaf. Silver doesn’t sound like that. That was copper. Asgardian copper, unless I miss my guess.”

Loki regarded him curiously. It was true. He’d glamoured a copper. He’d only arrived in Jotunheim a few hours ago and he didn’t have any Jotun money yet.

“Are you going to tell on me?”

The Jotun took a swig of his own ale and smiled. “A tiny thing like you? That would be mean.”

“I’m not tiny,” Loki said indignantly.

The Jotun stuck one meaty arm out and felt around for the top of Loki’s head and patted it. Loki sputtered, his face going hot, and batted the hand away while the horrible, handsome Jotun laughed at him.

This was not exactly how Loki had envisioned this evening going. His plan had been simple—set a glamour of himself sleeping in his bed at the palace to fool the minders that Hela had assigned him, sneak out, and get drunk enough to forget that tomorrow he was supposed to marry someone he’d never met before. Not just any someone—the Crown Prince of Jotunheim. They said that Prince Thor had fought a fire demon with his bare hands and won; that he had tamed a thunderstorm with a hammer and held it captive to do his bidding; that a sorceress had taken half his face, leaving him utterly disfigured, and in revenge he had collapsed an entire planet on her. If even a tenth of the stories about him were true, Loki should be running away screaming, or at least getting very, very drunk. 

Instead, he had yet to consume a sip of alcohol, and a blind frost giant was _teasing_ him.

“How are you so knowledgeable about the sound of Asgardian money, anyway?” Loki said.

“I’m knowledgeable about a great many things,” the Jotun said suggestively. He ran the tip of one blue finger around the edge of his mug and then licked it. Something hot bloomed in Loki’s belly, and he found himself flushing despite the cold. “What I don’t know, however,” the Jotun continued, “is what a sweet-voiced little Asgardian like you is doing in a rough-and-tumble place like this.”

The compliment made Loki’s toes curl in his boots. He had been ready for questions like that though, and already had an excuse prepared. “Oh, I’m just passing through. I’m here with the wedding party.” It wasn’t strictly untrue.

The Jotun smiled, though something about it looked a little sad. “As am I.”

“Do you know Prince Thor?” Loki asked. Maybe he could find out a scrap of truth about his betrothed—

“Better than most, perhaps,” the Jotun said. “But he’s not who I’m interested in tonight.”

The Jotun raised two fingers and the barkeep materialized instantly, inclining his head to Loki’s new friend while touching his knuckles to his brow. That two-fingered gesture was a neat trick—it had taken Loki minutes to get the barkeep’s attention earlier. He’d have to remember it.

“A shot glass for my companion here,” the blind Jotun said. Then to Loki, “That should be more your size. It would be a crime to let you go thirsty.”

“What shall I call you?” Loki said as the Jotun busied himself filling Loki’s shot glass, which was slightly smaller than an Asgardian pint glass. He watched with interest as the Jotun poured just until the level of the liquid reached his fingertip, which he’d stuck past the rim.

“Keep talking with that pretty voice of yours and you can call me whatever you like.”

Loki’s face went hot again, and he buried it in his glass as he finally took a long gulp of ale. He was being _flirted_ with. It was entirely novel. No one at home would have dared speak to their Prince so intimately. He found that he liked it, very much. He also, embarrassingly, had no idea how to respond.

“I apologize if I’m too forward,” the Jotun said, misinterpreting his silence as displeasure. “I’ve been told it’s one of my many failings.”

“N-no,” Loki stuttered, setting his drink down. “It’s fine. It’s good. I...I like it.”

He’d never been so forward himself, and he realized his pulse had picked up. How scandalous, that he was out in disguise the night before his own wedding, encouraging a commoner’s advances. His father would clap them both in _chains_. The thought made the entire situation all the more thrilling.

The blind Jotun smiled, a grin so wide and happy that it transformed his whole face.

“Then what shall I call _you_?” the Jotun said.

Loki took another gulp of ale, and before he could stop himself said, “Whatever you like if you keep flattering me like this.”

The Jotun smiled again, like sunshine itself, and ran his finger along the back of Loki’s hand. Loki’s arm erupted in goosebumps.

“Then I’ll call you Little Bird, for how sweetly you sing,” the Jotun said.

The part of Loki that liked to preen ate up the Jotun’s compliments about his voice with satisfaction. It made him want to show off.

“And I’ll call you—” Loki dropped his voice into a lower register in a way that he hoped was appealing. “Sunshine.” _For how you make me melt_. “For your smile.”

“Oh, Little Bird, you’ve made my night immeasurably better already,” the Jotun said. He raised his mug to Loki, and Loki clinked his glass against it, and they both drained their drinks dry. Loki hid a hiccup behind his hand.

“Another,” Loki said.

*

Loki’s new companion refilled his little glass three times before the initial mug finally ran dry. With each one, Loki’s smile grew wider, his posture more unguarded. Usually Loki tired of other people’s company fairly quickly, but he found the opposite was true with this stranger, this “Sunshine”; the more they talked, the more Loki wanted to keep talking to him.

Their conversation ranged all over the place. They talked of everything and nothing. Loki did his best to stay away from the particulars of his own life, and he realized after a bit that the Jotun was doing the same, just as he had also shied away from giving his name. That was fine with Loki. More than fine. It was a relief, actually, to just talk with no expectations attached to it due to who he was, or who he was talking to, so unlike the bloodless warfare of court politics. They were just two people enjoying each other’s company. 

The Jotun had a surprisingly sharp-edged wit that stoked Loki into gales of laughter more than once. He was insightful as well, and moved fluidly between jesting and more serious topics. His breadth of knowledge rivaled Loki’s own. More than once Loki found himself wondering where he had been educated, but the thought was always fleeting, for the Jotun would be leaning in to whisper some new thing, his mouth near enough to Loki’s ear that Loki could feel the warmth of his breath, and it would quickly be forgotten. And oh, the things he whispered, heavy with innuendo and yet also tender, sweet, endearing. It made Loki flush and melt by turns, and a shivering anticipation started to build in him, a certainty that the night was going to end a particular way, one that Loki was familiar with only from books or snatches of conversation between servants.

The idea was terribly exciting. Loki might have done it simply for the scandal of it—fucking a commoner the night before his wedding. How his father and sister would rage. But as an hour passed by, and then two, Loki came to realize something far more disturbing. He actually liked this man. He liked his sense of humor, the way he smiled with his whole face, his clear sense of decency. Loved the shape of him, big and thick and powerful and yet, somehow, soft. Craved his attention. Wanted to be worthy of it.

This was dangerous. Loki couldn’t afford to like anybody.

The depth of the unexpected emotion would have been enough to send him running but for one thing—

The Jotun was also making Loki like _himself_.

Loki knew that in general he was a standoffish person, prone to sarcasm and rudeness and pettiness, and he pretended that it was all done on purpose as part of his image as Asgard’s aloof Prince, but in reality—it wasn’t on purpose. He hated himself most of the time. 

But this stranger? He drew someone else out of Loki entirely. The Loki who rose to meet this Jotun’s jests was charming and friendly and quick-witted. This Loki leaned into intimacy instead of away from it. This Loki was almost—and Loki hardly dared think the word— _kind_. Despite not wearing his own face, this was the closest Loki had ever gotten to being the person he felt like he actually was, and it awakened some yearning inside him that he was helpless to resist.

And so Loki didn’t run. He drew closer.

He tried to reason it to himself. His life was ending tomorrow. Shouldn’t he be allowed one night of happiness before that?

“I’m afraid my ale has finally run dry,” Loki said. Grown daring over the course of the evening, he leaned his head on the stranger’s shoulder and laid his hand on a bare blue forearm. It was surprisingly warm. Loki squeezed it, terrified and excited at his own actions, and tried not to tremble clear off his barstool.

The Jotun covered Loki’s hand with his own and nuzzled into his hair, breathing in deep.

“Whatever shall we do now?” Loki whispered.

In response, the Jotun stood. Loki looked up at him, gulping. He was _big_. He was two feet taller than Loki if he was an inch, the bare torso under his fur mantle so thick and heavily muscled that Loki didn’t even think he could get his arms around it. Before Loki could even open his mouth to say anything else, the Jotun simply—picked him up.

He slung Loki over his shoulder and Loki squawked in surprise, flailing.

“Hush, Little Bird,” the Jotun said, and patted Loki’s bottom fondly. “Don’t wear out your voice yet. We have all night.”

 _All night—_ Loki’s head spun, and he grabbed at the Jotun’s waist.

The Jotun started for the stairs, people melting out of his way.

“Be careful—” Loki said. “How are you—I thought you couldn’t see—”

“I’m completely blind in my right eye,” the Jotun said cheerfully, “but only _mostly_ blind in the other. I can make out patterns of light and dark. Enough not to run into walls...most of the time.”

“Oh,” Loki said weakly. Then he giggled, and finally went completely limp and let himself be carried up the stairs like a prize deer.

He was going to fuck a frost giant.

He hoped his father and Hela could tell, somehow, when he showed up for the wedding tomorrow debauched and unrepentant. Maybe he’d still smell of their coupling. Maybe there would be marks on his skin. Maybe the Jotun’s spend would still be dripping from him—

Loki realized he’d groaned out loud. The Jotun patted his bottom again and then left his hand there, one giant palm cradling Loki’s asscheek and squeezing it, until Loki was wiggling against him.

“Hurry,” Loki pleaded.

The Jotun already had a room, it seemed. He took a key from his belt and unlocked the last door in the hall, and then they were inside, and he was throwing the bolt on the door, and Loki slipped down off the Jotun’s shoulder just enough for the man to cradle his ass with both hands while Loki wrapped his legs around his waist. Those arms were so powerful that Loki felt like a little bird in truth, held aloft as easily as one might hold a feather.

“Hurry,” Loki said again, and squeezed his legs tighter, making the Jotun groan and walk them to the bed.

The Jotun sat on the edge of it, settling Loki into his lap straddling him, and wrapped his huge hands around Loki’s ribcage.

“Patience, sweetling,” the Jotun said. "There's no rush. I want to know how you feel first."

The Jotun brought his fingertips lightly to Loki’s face, a gentle caress that seemed impossible from one so large and rough-hewn. Oh, Norns. Loki’s lips parted and he took a deep breath. Then, carefully, he let his glamour dissolve. There was no one in this room but the two of them, and Loki wanted to be fully himself for this. 

The Jotun skimmed his fingers all over Loki’s face. His thumbs smoothed along the curve of Loki’s brow, swept up his cheekbones; his index finger traced the length of Loki’s nose, going back to feel again at the little bump in the ridge of it; then down to Loki’s lips, learning the shape of them before pulling the lower one down just slightly and letting it spring back. He cupped Loki’s face in both hands, cradling it. Brought their foreheads together and rocked them back and forth, their noses brushing.

Every second that it dragged out Loki felt his breath growing shorter and shallower. He didn’t know what to do with his own hands. They fluttered from the Jotun’s shoulders to his arms to his chest and back, never settling, until finally the Jotun gently took them and held them between their bodies, his hands completely enveloping Loki’s. He was so warm. Loki didn’t know why he’d thought that Jotuns would be cold.

The Jotun tugged at the hem of Loki’s shirt. Loki raised his arms and the Jotun drew it off over his head and dropped it to the ground, then settled his hands on Loki’s bare shoulders. A frisson ran through Loki’s whole body, and he squirmed helplessly.

“ _Don’t_ laugh,” Loki said.

The corner of the Jotun’s mouth lifted in a smile. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Loki had never felt more naked, even though he was half clothed still. The Jotun slid his huge hands down Loki’s arms, past his elbows, and played with the bones of his wrists, then his hands. Then he was spreading his palms wide over Loki’s chest, feeling the breadth of him, and thumbing at his nipples, and Loki tried not to squirm again, he really did, but the touch was lighting his entire body up like a live wire and he was helpless against it. He wriggled. 

“Gods,” Loki whimpered. He was so hard already. The Jotun’s thick thigh was between his legs and dimly Loki wondered if he could just ride it, rub himself off and finish without even being touched properly, without even being kissed.

The last thought filled him with the overwhelming desire for a kiss, and he found himself surging forward eagerly, the Jotun’s gentle request for patience be damned. But those strong arms stopped him, as immovable as stone.

“What?” Loki said. “Do you not want—”

He felt very small, then, and very stupid. Of course. Perhaps Loki wasn’t in the habit of frequenting taverns to pick up men for a quick tumble, but this Jotun probably did it every night. How slickly had he avoided giving Loki his name or any details of his life? He probably didn’t want his one-night stands _kissing_ him.

Loki wouldn’t be any good at it anyway. He could count the number of people he’d kissed on one hand and have more than one finger left over. In fact, this entire tryst was ill-advised. He was only going to embarrass himself once his inexperience finally became apparent. He should leave...he shouldn’t have let it go this far…

“I do,” the Jotun said, “just...wait a moment.” His voice sounded rough, even rougher than it had been. Loki stopped trying to pull away and realized that the Jotun wasn’t exactly… _stopping_ him, he was…

Dear merciful gods, he was _scenting_ him. The Jotun had nosed into Loki’s hair, then down behind his ear, and now he was burying his face in Loki’s neck and inhaling deeply. His beard was soft against Loki’s breastbone. Loki found himself stroking that wild thicket of hair and hugging the Jotun around the neck, holding him close. 

“You drive me mad,” the Jotun said huskily. “Your voice, the way you feel under my hands, the smell of you...I feel like I dreamed you into life. Were you made for me, Little Bird?”

And _oh_. Loki’s worry fled as quickly as it came. No one in all his life had ever made him feel as wanted as this stranger did. Not his family, nor any friend he’d ever had, nor even any would-be lover. How unexpected, that he should find this here, in the worst tavern in Jotunheim, on what should have been the second worst night of his life.

“Perhaps I was,” Loki said, suddenly and for no reason on the edge of tears. 

The Jotun pulled back then, and Loki tilted his face up, seeking, and they finally kissed.

Loki leaned into it like a wanton. He opened his mouth, trying to coax the Jotun’s tongue into it, and they licked against each other, soft and unhurried, melting and sweet. A soft moan escaped him. The Jotun’s tongue was so big, too big for Loki’s tiny mouth, but Loki loved the feel of it. He pushed at the fur mantle still covering the Jotun’s shoulders, searching for the clasp by touch, until finally it fell away and there was nothing under Loki’s hands but skin.

The Jotun pulled back, his breathing uneven.

“I can feel your heart racing,” he said. “Are you frightened?”

Loki shook his head, then realized he needed to speak. “No. No, I’m not frightened.”

And perhaps he should be, locked up alone with a stranger who could snap him in half with ease. The Jotun smiled, and Loki took the Jotun’s hand and put it to his face so that he could feel Loki’s smile as well. In truth, Loki had never felt safer.

“Touch me,” Loki heard himself say. He dragged the Jotun’s hand down his chest, towards where his cock was straining his trousers. “Please,” he whispered. He had never wanted anything more.

The Jotun wrapped his hands around Loki’s waist and picked him up. Loki was so surprised that he squawked, scrabbling at those broad shoulders as his entire weight was lifted into the air. Then he was being set down on the edge of the bed, his feet dangling (Jotun beds were absolutely enormous), and the Jotun was going to his knees on the floor before him, and tugging Loki’s boots and trousers off. Loki wasted no time lifting his hips so that the offending fabric could be stripped away.

He was completely naked. He fought the urge to giggle. When was the last time he’d ever been naked with anyone? The nursemaids who changed his nappies? Even his few fumbling attempts at intimacy before this had never resulted in his nakedness. He thought he ought to feel shame, but he didn’t.

“Have I been patient enough?” Loki said, going for a teasing lilt and falling a little short. He sounded far too eager. He drew the Jotun’s hand towards his bobbing erection.

When the Jotun’s great fist closed around him they both let out sighs.

“Beautiful,” the Jotun murmured. He leaned in for a kiss. His thumb rubbed at the tip of Loki’s cock, smearing his wetness around as he murmured against Loki’s lips. “Beautiful, beautiful.”

Loki _mmm_ ed and licked against the Jotun’s tongue, then gasped into his mouth as the Jotun gave his cock a long firm tug. 

“Let me hear you, Little Bird.”

And then the Jotun was moving, sinking down between Loki’s legs, and he took Loki’s cock in his mouth, and Loki let himself be heard. He moaned unreservedly. He would have done it even if the Jotun hadn’t asked. He wouldn’t have been able to help himself. It was the best thing he’d ever felt.

Loki was well endowed as far as those things went, but the Jotun had no problem swallowing him down to the root. He was just so big. Loki leaned back on one arm, reaching out with the other to brush the Jotun’s hair back from his face as he laved Loki’s cock with his tongue, his head bobbing. The Jotun leaned into his touch like a cat. It made Loki keep his hand there, threaded into that mane of hair, his fingers flexing. The man was marvelously responsive; with the barest of tugs Loki could move him this way or that or hold him completely still.

But Loki was being selfish. His lover wanted to hear him.

“Yes,” Loki breathed, arching back as the Jotun’s tongue swirled around his cock. “Just like that. It feels so—gods, it feels so good. You feel so good. You’re so— _ahh_ —you’re so— _fuck_ , just like that—”

He knew he was babbling. He let his head fall back, his eyes closing. Hot desire curled through him, making him squirm, a gathering storm deep in his loins.

“Stop, I’m going to—” Loki said. The Jotun kept going, giving firm attention to the sensitive underside of his cockhead with his tongue and lips and even his thumb. “Please, I’m going to—”

“Mmm,” the Jotun hummed around him, and Loki came.

Whenever Loki brought himself off, even in the privacy of his own rooms, he did it in silence. He wasn’t silent now. He let out a strangled groan that ended on a whimper as the Jotun suckled him clean, and he collapsed back on the bed and covered his face with his hands, his cheeks burning. Norns, he had come as quickly as an untouched youth.

“I’m sorry,” Loki mumbled through his hands.

“What for? It was a pleasure I intended to give.” The Jotun’s voice was warm. His hands kneaded at Loki’s thighs and he kissed them, first one and then the other. “I would give you more as well, if you want it.” He nudged Loki’s legs further apart, pushed one of them up so that Loki’s knee was bent, and kissed down the inside of his thigh, nipping lightly, stopping just shy of Loki’s entrance. His breath was warm on Loki’s skin.

Loki let his hands fall away from his face. He stared up at the canopy of the bed.

“I want it,” Loki whispered.

The Jotun rubbed his thumb in small circles over Loki’s hole, making Loki sigh and twist.

“I can give you my mouth again, here,” the Jotun said.

Loki nodded, then remembered his words and managed a “Yes, please,” and the Jotun set his mouth to the place between Loki’s legs.

Loki thought that this was probably not how casual encounters with strangers were supposed to go. He was far too invested in this, was giving away far too much of himself. And yet, the stranger was meeting him trespass for trespass, both of them riding roughshod over the boundaries that should properly still exist between them.

Loki held the Jotun’s head with both hands and ground into him. His own head spun with the remnants of his orgasm and the ale. It was too soon for him to grow hard again, but the feel of the Jotun’s mouth and hands was a pleasure all the same. It was a pleasure also to bask in the Jotun’s obvious enthusiasm; again, that feeling of being _wanted_ , that Loki wasn’t a chore or a burden to be dealt with and then gotten out of the way. 

The Jotun hiked Loki’s leg over his shoulder and kissed his knee. He probed at Loki with his thumb again, pushing, not firmly enough to enter him. Loki’s hips arched up off the bed, seeking the pressure. But first—

“Let me see you,” Loki said. Another kiss to his knee and then the Jotun stood. Loki scooted over to the edge of the bed to help. Together they pulled the Jotun’s breeches down and his hard cock bobbed forward, right at the level of Loki’s face. He swallowed thickly. It was large, though Loki saw with a small amount of relief that it wasn’t impossibly so. It would fit. They would make it fit. His belly tightened in anticipation.

Impulsively, he reached forward and kissed it.

The Jotun groaned, a low guttural sound that sent desire curling through Loki hot enough to make his cock start to rouse again. He kissed the head again, and then licked it, one hand wrapping around the shaft to guide it against his mouth. 

“That’s an interesting way you have of seeing,” the Jotun said. His big hand cupped Loki’s cheek as Loki licked all up and down him again, and then suckled at the tip.

“Mmm,” Loki said. He took the Jotun down as far as he could, halfway down before the Jotun’s cock was running up against the back of his throat, then pulled off, licking his lips. “I’ve always been a hands-on person.”

It amused him to say, because he _was_ hands-on when it came to academics, always preferring to experiment himself instead of merely reading about things in books, and even if he’d never had occasion to do this particular kind of learning it didn’t mean the skillset wouldn’t transfer. Throwing himself into spellwork or throwing himself onto a cock, what was the difference?

Loki stood, the bed giving him enough height to top the Jotun by a few inches, and put his hands on the Jotun’s shoulders and put his mouth to his ear. He lowered his voice, the way it seemed the Jotun liked, injecting it with a dark rasp.

“All night I’ve wanted you inside me,” Loki said. The Jotun shivered. He put his hands on Loki’s waist and squeezed. Loki continued. “Would you like that? Tell me.”

“More than anything. But...I’m very large for such a little bird...”

“You wouldn’t hurt me.”

The Jotun sighed ruefully, a hint of sadness at odds with the rest of the situation. “I won’t. Not if I can help it.”

Loki took the Jotun’s earlobe between his teeth, sucking on it, until the Jotun was letting his head fall to the side and offering the tender spot behind his ear, his lips parted and his breathing ragged. He dragged his hands up and down Loki’s back, his fingertips digging in just shy of painfully. They writhed together like that for a moment. It made Loki feel powerful. Beautiful.

“You won’t hurt me,” Loki whispered again, mostly to himself.

The Jotun pulled him into another kiss. It was hungry, more demanding than anything they had yet done together. The Jotun’s tongue bullied into Loki’s mouth and he bit at Loki’s lips, just hard enough to make Loki moan into their shared breath, the fire in the pit of his stomach flaring to life. He thrust his cock against the Jotun’s front. He was completely hard again, somehow.

The Jotun palmed his ass with both hands and hauled him closer, crushing them together, and Loki rutted against him helplessly for a moment. His strength was so outmatched. The Jotun could hold him here as long as he liked, rub him off like he was a doll and make him spend again just like this. It was hopelessly arousing. He heard himself whimpering. 

Just when the friction was starting to build upon itself into something purposeful, the Jotun let him go and they broke apart, both of them panting.

“Get on your hands and knees,” the Jotun growled, somewhere between a request and an order, but one that Loki was happy to obey either way. He scrambled to comply, moving to the center of the bed. He was breathing even harder by the time the Jotun moved behind him, acutely aware of his position and how exposed he was, even though the Jotun couldn’t see him. He was a prince. His station didn’t allow for such submissiveness. 

How he craved it.

Out of spite, of course, because it was in his nature to want everything that he wasn’t allowed to have, but also simply the animal yearnings of his body. His arms trembled.

Then the Jotun’s mouth was back on his hole, and the world fell away. Loki sank lower and lower, until his arms gave out completely and he just let himself lay sprawled with his ass up in the air as the Jotun spread him apart with his tongue and his thick fingers. It was incredible. The sensation of it, and also that he was allowing it to happen, encouraging it. He realized at some point that his mouth had fallen open and he was tearing at the blankets like some mindless thing, his hips undulating as the Jotun fucked him with his tongue.

He reached back and held himself open, shameless.

“Fuck me,” he pleaded.

The Jotun slid two spit-slick fingers into him, curling them, making Loki whimper.

“Is it my cock you want, Little Bird?” the Jotun rasped.

“Gods. Yes.”

Unexpectedly, Loki was being flipped over, and he blinked up at the Jotun, dazed. Then the Jotun was settling himself up against the headboard, seated, and he pulled Loki up into his lap. His cock lay nestled between Loki’s asscheeks. The Jotun rutted up against him, sliding through the slickness that was still there from his mouth.

“Hurry,” Loki said. Waiting even a moment longer seemed like torture.

The Jotun reached over to the bed stand with one long arm. His big hands coated both of them with oil, and then Loki was lifting his hips, and together they guided the head of the Jotun’s cock between Loki’s legs.

Loki found himself bracing himself against the Jotun’s chest as he worked his hips around, biting his lip, trying to find the angle that would—

 _Ohhh_. Loki stopped for a moment, gasping. The Jotun’s cock was inside him. Only barely, but it was _inside him_. Unexpected emotion welled up in him. This handsome, sweet, generous stranger was the first person that had ever taken him, and it was something Loki had chosen for himself, just because the offer was given freely and he wanted it. This belonged to him in a way that nothing in his life ever had.

He almost cried. 

A wave of affection for the man whose lap he was in overwhelmed him and he dragged him into a messy kiss.

“Alright, Little Bird?” the Jotun murmured. His hands circled Loki’s waist. Loki tightened his muscles around the Jotun’s cock and he felt the Jotun’s hips flex just the tiniest bit, an involuntary motion—so he did it again, and shifted his hips down as well, taking in another half inch, and grinned when the Jotun groaned, full-throated.

“More than alright,” Loki said.

By the time Loki managed to work himself all the way down the Jotun’s cock, his grin was gone and he was flushed and sweating and had collapsed fully against the Jotun’s chest, his head tucked under his chin and the Jotun’s strong arms engulfing him. The Jotun murmured words of praise the entire time. He told Loki how good he felt, how wonderful he was, and it fed some part of Loki that had long grown accustomed to hunger. Perhaps it should have remained unfed, he thought with a sweet sort of despair. Now he knew what was missing. 

“Oh sweetling,” the Jotun rumbled when they were finally fully joined, and Loki, with his ear against the Jotun’s chest, felt the vibration through his entire body. He shivered like an icicle about to fall from an eave. _You’re wrong_ , Loki wanted to say. _I am bitterness and envy. There is nothing of sweetness in me._ But the Jotun had already proved himself capable of seeing through Loki’s illusions, and if he saw sweetness perhaps it was there. Loki had never wanted to believe anything more. He clenched around the thick length piercing him and clutched at the Jotun’s shoulders.

The Jotun began to move beneath Loki, fucking up into him. Slow at first, and only a fingerbreadth of movement. Still, Loki could feel the intrusion of it up into his chest, an unforgiving pressure that threatened to split him apart at the same time that it filled him utterly, and his muscles didn’t know whether to clench or release; they did both, and it didn’t matter either way, for either way the Jotun’s cock was still inside him, fucking him.

 _Fucking him_. He was being fucked. Gods. The thought made him giddy.

He pushed himself up and began trying to rock back to meet the Jotun’s thrusts. It was—gods, it was—he bit his lip, his hair falling in his face, his fingers flexing in the meat of the Jotun’s chest—

“More,” he heard himself say, from a very great distance.

The Jotun gave him more.

“Fuck,” he groaned as the Jotun snapped his hips, driving up into him. They picked up speed and the Jotun wrapped his hands around Loki’s waist and guided him exactly where he wanted him. Loki went, unresisting, happy to be led. It was all he could do to keep his muscles innervated at all, and the Jotun knew exactly how to fuck him to make it feel good, chasing different angles until they were both grunting with the pleasure of it. Loki was losing his mind. Every single thought was being fucked out of his head until the only thing that was left was that cock, dragging in and out of him over and over. 

He found himself struggling upright, leaning back, right at the edge of—of something—oh it was right there—right—

And his mouth fell open, and the Jotun was sticking one of those thick fingers into it, and without thinking, Loki wrapped his lips around it and started sucking.

“Fuck,” the Jotun said breathlessly. All Loki could do was moan around him, filled from both ends.

Suddenly he was being tumbled down onto his back, the Jotun’s cock still inside him, and then he was crying out, because the Jotun began fucking him so deeply, so thoroughly, that Loki thought he would surely fall apart. Every thrust drove a helpless sound out of him. Somehow he managed to get a hand between them so that his cock had something consistent to rub against, and oh, _oh_.

He was right there again at that edge. It was something beyond the normal build-up of pleasure that led to orgasm, something bigger. Trying to chase it only made it recede. He just had to—to—to give up control—

“Little bird, my little bird,” the Jotun was saying, over and over. He mouthed at any part of Loki he could reach. Loki’s legs had to spread so wide to accommodate that thick powerful body. He was being claimed and he didn’t even know if the Jotun knew it, knew what he was doing to Loki, how high Loki had climbed and how hard he was about to fall—and _oh_ , Valhalla and the Nine—he was coming up on that place inside him, it was _right there_ , it just—he just—he needed—

He cried out as it took him, and he came and came and _came_ , shuddering and clawing at the Jotun’s back.

The Jotun fucked him through it. Loki finally came back to himself and, delirious with post-orgasmic bliss, began babbling the most awful, sentimental things. “That’s it, come on, my beautiful ray of sunshine, yes, yes, oh you drengr, you glorious thing, how I adore you, yes, yes, _yes_ —”

The Jotun groaned, and his thrusts grew more urgent, his control slipping. “Come on,” Loki urged again, and he scraped his teeth on the Jotun’s collarbone, the only part of him he could reach, and then the Jotun was sliding out, out, all the way out—and no, Loki wanted to say, spend in me, please—but it was only so that the Jotun could slide all the way in again, hard and sure, one perfect thrust, and then he was tensing in Loki’s arms and coming on a long low growl, and Loki held him through it as best he could. His fingertips could scarcely meet around him.

They lay on their sides afterwards, still joined, their limbs tangled. As his head cooled off, Loki began growing acutely embarrassed of his behavior. He had been utterly shameless. And the things he’d said—

He hid his face in the Jotun’s chest.

After a few moments, the Jotun slid out of him, gently, then rose to go to the wash basin. Loki rolled onto his back. His belly and chest were smeared with his own spend, and the Jotun’s dripped out of him. The smell of sex hung in the air. How debauched Loki must look.

 _This is how you will show up to your own wedding_ , his mind whispered.

The Jotun brought a damp cloth back and began cleaning Loki off by touch. Loki let him. He lay there and obediently moved his limbs and let himself be washed like a babe until all the physical traces of their encounter were gone. It seemed strange, that it should clean up so easily. Loki himself felt forever changed.

The Jotun’s hand found his face and tilted it towards him for a kiss.

“Will you stay the night?” the Jotun said.

Loki blinked.

“I should get back to the palace,” Loki said. “I’m in the wedding party. And I'll… I'll be leaving afterwards. I have duties. I can't… We can't do this again. I'm sorry."

The Jotun’s finger stroked his cheek. His hands were calloused, but the touch was gentle.

"Duty is a burden I know far too well. But the ceremony doesn’t start til midday. Let us not waste our one night together. Stay. Please."

Loki struggled with himself for a moment. The illusion he’d set of himself in his bed would fool his minders, but it wouldn’t fool Odin or Hela. They would probably want to see him early. Odin to make sure his youngest wasn’t going to embarrass him in front of a foreign court, and Hela to rub in the fact that selling Loki off was her idea. If Loki wasn’t there, _oh_ the hue and cry that would go up.

Loki laced his fingers with the Jotun’s and the Jotun smiled at him. Did the man even know how to smile without lighting up his whole face? _Oh, Sunshine_ , Loki thought, his heart melting. What was one more morning of his family’s wrath compared with this sweetness? Did he not deserve one happy thing?

“I’ll stay.”

*

They slept for a bit, perhaps an hour. Loki rose to use the privy, and when he crawled back into the bed the Jotun folded him up against him. Loki had never felt so small and safe. They kissed, and then kept kissing, sleepy and languid. Kissing had never held any appeal for Loki before, but he thought he understood now why people did it. It was different when it wasn’t something to just get over with. When it was done for the sake of itself and not an end goal. When one had feelings—

No. This was just one night of excess. Feelings were not only impossible so soon after meeting someone, they would be frankly disastrous given the circumstances.

Loki pushed it firmly from his mind. Instead, he took the Jotun’s hand and put it on his hip in invitation, and replaced his troublesome thoughts with the sensations of his body. 

“Ready again so soon?” the Jotun murmured, giving him a squeeze.

“I think my body may always be ready for you,” Loki said. The admission was only possible because he knew he would never see this man again after tonight.

They didn’t move from their sides, still lazy from their previous round. The Jotun held them both in one big hand and they thrust against each other, their breathing growing more labored, until the Jotun came first, covering them both with his spend. Loki came quickly after, pushed over the edge by the thrill of being tugged off using spend as slick. He pulled the Jotun into a kiss as he came.

Loki cleaned them this time, using his seidr. His stomach rumbled, and the Jotun leaned down and nuzzled his belly, then sat up and began pulling on his trousers.

“I’ll be right back,” the Jotun said. “Don’t even think about getting out of that bed.”

When he returned with a platter of food, Loki had spread out to take up as much of the bed as possible, legs and arms thrown wide. He wiggled around thwarting the Jotun’s attempts to sit down anywhere on it, both of them laughing.

“It’s my bed now,” Loki said. “Terribly sorry.”

The Jotun caught his wrist and pinned it up by his head, then ducked down for a kiss. It made Loki melt, again, and he found his other arm going around the Jotun’s neck to pull him closer.

“A-ha!” the Jotun said, using the opportunity to finally sit.

“No fair,” Loki complained. “You cheated.”

The Jotun had brought them ice cold water, and grapes and cold chicken and bread with salty yellow butter, and a pot of rich custard with two spoons. They fed each other, each laughing at the other’s small jests, and when Loki was full, he laid down with his head in the Jotun’s lap, and closed his eyes in contentment while the Jotun petted his hair.

“Do you ever wonder,” Loki said drowsily, “about other lives you might have led?”

The Jotun was quiet for a moment, wrapping one of Loki’s curls around his finger. “Most times I’m too busy to let myself fret about such things. But sometimes I do.”

“What do you dream of?”

“Hmm.” The Jotun tucked Loki’s hair behind his ear and smoothed his hand through it. “I dream of what it might be like to be free of the constant weight of expectation. To be able to do things for myself, and not worry about letting others down. To choose happiness over duty. What about you, sweetling? What do you dream of?”

No one had ever asked Loki that before, or would have cared to hear the answer.

“Forging my own destiny,” Loki said. He stared out across the room, watching the firelight flicker across the floor in moving shadows. “All my life I’ve had my decisions made for me. What to do, what to wear, what to say.” _Who to marry._ “If anyone knew I was here tonight...” Loki scoffed lightly.

“I believe I know a little of that pain,” the Jotun said after a moment. “Though by the sadness in your voice, perhaps not as much as you.”

“It sounds like both of us are trapped.” Loki blinked, and there were tears in his eyes. He didn’t let them fall. He wondered what the Jotun’s life was like. What he did in his day-to-day, what his station was. Who would he be letting down by doing things that brought him happiness? Surely no one would want to deny this man anything.

“I would uncage you if I could, Little Bird.”

“Imagine if we could do as we will—” Loki said. “We could stay in this bed for three days, and when we finally chose to leave it we could go—anywhere. Anywhere we wanted.”

“You would take me with you?”

Loki stopped breathing for a moment, embarrassed that he had unthinkingly said “we” and not “I.”

“I would come,” the Jotun continued softly. He began stroking Loki’s hair again. “Without a moment’s hesitation I would come.”

“What’s stopping us?” Loki whispered. His chest hurt.

“Duty,” the Jotun said, the word as heavy as a mountain.

“Duty,” Loki repeated. He rolled, turning towards the Jotun’s belly and burying his face in his lap. “You really are made of sunshine. You’ll burn me up. How am I to live after this?”

The Jotun tugged him upward and kissed him breathless, until Loki’s body began growing hot again. When the Jotun touched his still-tender hole gently, Loki hissed with more pain than pleasure, and that avenue was quickly abandoned in favor of rolling Loki onto his back and rutting between his oil-slick thighs. The slide of the Jotun’s length between his legs and along all of his intimate places was a new and unique pleasure of its own. The Jotun swallowed Loki’s cock down afterwards and brought him to release for a fourth time in as many hours.

Loki felt wrung out afterwards, slow and sleepy and boneless.

They drowsed into the small hours of the morning, sometimes waking to shift position, to wrap an arm more securely around the other, to steal a kiss. Sometime just before dawn, Loki woke for what he thought would probably be the last time. The Jotun snored softly next to him.

The fire had died down to red-edged coals glowing faintly in the darkness. A deep sadness settled over him. He needed to rise, and set himself to rights, and steal back to the palace. It felt like an impossible task. How could he simply go back to his guest chambers and put on his wedding raiment and pretend that everything was fine? That his heart hadn’t just been broken by some commoner?

He wasn’t supposed to have a heart at all.

He should rise now and get it over with. Grab his clothes and sneak out while the Jotun slept, oblivious.

Before he could make himself do it, the Jotun shifted behind him, and one big blue arm stole around his waist. 

“Good morning, lover,” the Jotun mumbled against his shoulder. Loki sighed, and pressed back against him. Just once more. 

This time it was Loki’s turn to slick them, and then he reached back and guided the Jotun’s cock to his hole himself. The discomfort only lasted a moment, and then he was sighing and moaning as the Jotun slid into him, his mouth hot on Loki’s neck. He spread his hand over Loki’s chest, holding him close as he fucked him with long strokes. It was surprising, Loki thought, how easily his body accepted this intrusion. It seemed like it should be more difficult. The Jotun moving inside him made him feel like some precious thing, a vessel to be filled with...with good things, with affection and kindness and respect and...and...love—

Oh, no. No no. Not that. Not—

Something huge lodged itself in Loki’s chest. He reached back to fist his hand in the Jotun’s hair, to writhe back against him, seeking. He was already so full, but he wanted more. Of what he didn’t know. Everything. He wanted to push them together until they fused. He wanted to brand himself with the Jotun’s body so that everyone would know that Loki would never belong to the prince they were selling him to, never, he would always belong to this man. His Sunshine.

The Jotun’s hand closed around his cock and he bucked into it. He sobbed as he came, though he didn’t realize it until after. The tears ran freely down his face as he hugged the Jotun’s arm around him, urging him to go faster, to use Loki as he liked, to not hold back, that Loki wanted him, wanted all of him—

Loki rolled over afterwards and buried himself in the Jotun’s chest and just let himself cry. The Jotun held him silently, his big hands stroking up and down Loki’s back.

“I don’t want to go,” Loki finally said long minutes later, unable to keep the hopelessness out of his voice.

“I know.”

The roughness of the Jotun’s voice startled Loki into looking up. He was crying too.

“Th—” Loki started, but his throat closed up and he had to stop and get himself together. “Thank you. This was—” _The best night of my life._

The Jotun quieted him with a kiss that almost made Loki break down again.

“I’ll cherish the memory of this night for all my days,” the Jotun said. “Those aren’t just words. I...”

Loki spoke to the Jotun’s chest, not daring to look at his face. “As will I. In...in another life...know that I stayed by your side. In this one, know that…” Loki closed his eyes. “...That I think I would have loved you.”

The Jotun cradled the back of his head and held him close.

“In this one, know that I already do.”

*

When Hela came in without knocking, Loki was sitting at the dressing table in his guest chambers admiring himself, and he watched her saunter closer in the mirror. Odin had already come and gone, and Loki was expecting her. His back was ramrod straight, his hair perfectly slicked back, his makeup flawless. A high-necked mantle of sleek black feathers wrapped around his shoulders like raven’s wings. He was armed and armored, tongue ready to cut, heart hidden behind a wall of ice. Nothing that she could say would reach him.

“Ready for your big day, little brother?”

“Quite.”

He stared at her reflection coldly. She’d hated him since before he was born for nothing but the crime of having a different mother, as though she could bring her own back to life out of sheer spite. A long time ago, he’d tried to love her. There was no love left in him now.

“I’ve just come from seeing your groom-to-be,” Hela said. Her eyes were so rimmed in kohl that they looked like two black holes in her face, sucking in all the light in the room. They glittered with barely concealed triumph. “Such a fearsome-looking brute, though all Jotuns are, don’t you think?”

Yesterday Loki might have agreed with her. He thought of his sunshine and met her clumsy jab with silence. 

She stepped up directly behind him so that her face hovered over his own in the mirror.

“I tire of looking at them. Fortunately I won’t have to much longer. Although I suppose you don’t get that luxury, do you?” Her smile was poisonous.

“At least I’ll have the luxury of not seeing your face anymore, sweet sister.”

It felt shockingly good to insult her so directly.

Hela’s eyes narrowed and she leaned down to drip venom in his ear.

“Tonight I go home to Asgard, and you stay here, alone and powerless, a pathetic pet on a leash. Yes, I’m sure you’ll enjoy the view from underneath Prince Thor. It’s the only place you’ll know until you give him children, you little _argr_ shapeshifter, and then, if you’re lucky, he’ll keep you there instead of throwing you in some tower cell to live out the rest of your miserable existence.”

Loki didn’t flinch while she was talking, though every muscle of his face and neck had tensed. He could scarcely even blink. Every word was cruel and every word was true, and the entire situation was her doing. It was she who had proposed the match to Odin. She who had sent diplomats to Jotunheim. And all of it to get rid of Loki in the most humiliating way possible—the ambitious little prince, put in his place warming the bed of a fairytale monster twice his size.

In that moment, had Loki had even a sliver less control, he would have tried to kill her.

Hela curled one black-nailed finger through the hair tucked behind his ear and he shuddered. She straightened, smiling.

“Hate me all you want, little brother. After today, I won’t think of you at all.”

She was halfway to the door before Loki found his voice.

“You’ll never have the throne, you know. Even though you’ve gotten rid of me, he won’t give it to you.”

She stopped.

“There’s a blackness in your heart,” Loki continued, his voice strained. “It poisons everything you touch. It will eat you alive.”

Hela cast one last look at him and left without another word.

*

Loki spent the remaining hour until the ceremony being shuttled around through various small pre-wedding rituals and fantasizing about increasingly elaborate ways to fake his own death and escape. His husband-to-be loomed large in his mind, a terrifyingly indistinct figure that refused to coalesce into anything concrete. All he knew of the man was the one letter that they’d exchanged after their betrothal was made final (a dry, terse thing from each of them, a formality more than anything else) and the wild rumors that had always existed about him. How many were true? Did he really only have half a face? Did he keep a pen of goats and kill one with his bare hands each morning to bathe in its blood?

Would he be kind to Loki, or cruel?

Did it matter either way?

Loki wished that he’d had a shred less duty in him and that he had stayed in that tavern this morning. Right now he and his lover could be somewhere a galaxy away from here. Would Loki see him today at the ceremony? Would he be able to hold himself together if he did?

Surely not. Surely he would end up causing some kind of interrealm incident and dishonor his marriage before the ink was even dry on the parchment.

That was a tempting thought as well. Absconding from his own wedding with a commoner, leaving Hela to deal with the fallout…the absolute scandal it would cause...maybe even war…

Loki sighed. He couldn’t plunge two worlds into war for the sake of his pathetic heart.

At last Loki stood before the ornate doors of the Great Hall. They towered over him, two stories high, made of ice as thick as he was tall and covered in elaborate carved scrollwork. Attendants flanked him on both sides ready to push them open and herald his entrance.

He had never felt smaller.

At some point an old priest in a jeweled robe had set a diadem of ice upon his brow. The cold of it burned into his skin. The point of contact was something to latch onto at least, and Loki used the small pain to center himself and get his breathing under control. He pictured the ice sending tendrils into him, crawling down to freeze his heart. 

A gong shivered the air into a thousand pieces, and the doors opened.

“His Royal Highness, Prince Loki Odinson of Asgard!”

Loki’s blood ran hot, then cold, and his vision narrowed alarmingly. 

For a moment he looked at his feet, too dizzy to take in the rest of the room, but he quickly picked his head up. He would not look frightened, or cowed. He was Loki of Asgard, Odin’s Son. He took a step, then another, and as he walked he materialized a train, a long shimmering spill of black starting at his waist and fanning out behind him.

The Great Hall was packed full of Asgardians and Jotuns alike. They all looked to him.

Loki looked to his groom.

For one terrible, drawn-out moment, Loki’s steps faltered, and he couldn’t breathe. By all the gods and Fates, it wasn’t possible...

“Sunshine,” Loki whispered.

There he was, standing at the end of the walkway, clad all in white and glowing like a star. Loki’s own personal sun. His Jotun lover. His soon-to-be husband. _Prince Thor_.

Loki nearly laughed out of sheer hysteria. The rest of the room fell away, and Loki kept walking forward as though in a trance. His Jotun— _Thor_ —couldn’t see him, Loki knew he couldn’t. Thor didn’t know yet. Did he? All of last night flashed through Loki’s mind in an instant. No. He couldn’t know. No one was that good of an actor.

Loki had the sudden terrifying thought that this was some elaborate hoax set up by Hela, to let Loki know that she knew what he had done last night, to dangle his heart’s desire in front of him before snatching it away, before the real Thor stepped out from behind this false one…

Loki swung wildly between elation, terror, and anger in the space of seconds, his mind such a whirl that he didn’t even look at Odin and Hela in the front row, didn’t even see their faces. The high collar of his feathered mantle felt too tight. He was trembling by the time he reached the dais.

A tiny thought popped out of nowhere. _Well, I did wonder if I’d see him at the ceremony_.

Loki stepped up to join his groom’s side, feigning a small stumble so that he could lean close enough for their hands to brush, and he murmured something for his lover’s ears alone.

“Hello, Sunshine.”

Thor stiffened as if struck, half turning to face Loki before he could stop himself. The shock on his face turned into one of his sunny smiles almost immediately, his grin so wide that it looked like his face might split in two. The ice around Loki’s heart melted under the warmth of it. No one was stepping up to take Thor’s place. This was Thor. The real Thor. Thor squeezed Loki’s fingers and Loki squeezed back, then stepped into his proper spot. His belly was aflutter. 

The priest standing before them gave both of them a quizzical look, then shrugged and raised his arms and the processional music ceased. As the priest began the opening chant, Loki snuck a look at Thor from the corner of his eye and saw that the big fool was still grinning. 

Loki realized he was smiling too. 

By the time the incantations were done and the handfasting itself was imminent, Loki had regained some semblance of composure. The hand he held out for binding wasn’t even shaking. When Thor placed his hand on top of it, Loki’s insides flushed with warmth, and as the priest wound the cord around them Thor laced his fingers through Loki’s and held on tightly. His other arm reached across to tighten around Loki’s bicep. It was a flagrant breach of decorum. Loki loved him madly.

Together, they said the words that Loki had resented memorizing a week ago. Now, he found himself expressing them wholeheartedly. Loki’s voice was high and clear, and Thor’s deep and resonant. They complemented each other beautifully.

“Beloved, I seek to know of you, to see you as you are, and love you as a mystery. I will take joy in you. To me, you are as the whispering of the tides, the cold breath of winter, the warmth of the sun’s rekindling. Let us be joined in purpose, two acting as one. Let the threads of our Fates be intertwined. May our union grow in love until the end of our days.”

When the priest pronounced them wed, Thor turned to Loki. He touched Loki’s cheek and his smile almost made Loki weep.

“Hello, husband,” Thor murmured.

“I’m so glad it’s you,” Loki murmured back, his voice catching on the last word.

Thor cupped his neck tenderly and bent down to kiss him, and Loki, who had only intended to give him a chaste peck here in public, found himself kissing him back unreservedly. He felt like he could take flight.

“Little Bird,” Thor said when they broke apart. He squeezed Loki’s neck and ran his hand down Loki’s shoulder, his eyes brimming with tears. “You wore feathers.”

**Author's Note:**

> Visit [darklittlestory's twitter](https://twitter.com/darklittlestory/status/1312769344338878467?s=19) for the beautiful art she made for this story! I love it so much. ❤️
> 
> Find me squawking at [twitter.com/thunderingraven](http://www.twitter.com/thunderingraven)


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